Test

There is a fairly small subset of r/Bitcoin users that run a full node. I think the idea of running a full node has gotten a bad rap over the years since there is so much talk about running on a Raspberry Pi, or getting zippy SSDs. Although all of this can be fun, it is often not really required at all. Here are some ways to run a full node starting with the very simple. I'll get into more complex configs, but these are all optional.

Tech Skill Level: 0 (the basics)

1. Download Bitcoin Core
2. Launch the downloaded installer and install the app
3. Launch the installed "Bitcoin Core" app and let it run overnight

In many cases, thats it. If your running a new machine with a fairly good internet connection, 8 or 9 hours will be enough to complete the "Initial Block Download" (IBD). This may fill up your drive a bit, but again, on most new machines, 300 GB of space isn't that hard to come by.

Tech Skill Level: 1 (encrypted wallet)

One thing we left out in the level-0 exercise is encrypting your wallet. It's easy enough to do well, but a bit more difficult to do right. The main challenge is that humans generate really poor passwords. If you want a good password, the best way is to use something called "diceware". Basically, you just grab 4 or 5 dice and each throw of the dice represents a certain word on a special list. The throw {1,4,5,3,1} for example would be the word camping on the EFF-diceware-wordlist. So you repeat this a few times until you have a list of 8 or so words which becomes the passphrase you use to encrypt your wallet. Write it down, it is always hard to remember at first. So at level-1 your list becomes:

1. Download Bitcoin Core
2. Launch the downloaded installer and install the app
3. Launch the installed "Bitcoin Core" app and let it run overnight
4. Choose Encrypt Wallet from the Settings Menu
5. Enter your 8 word (or so) passphrase generated using the Diceware method

​

Wallet Encryption Dialog

Tech Skill Level: 2 (enable pruning if needed)

Though I said "300 GB of space isn't hard to come by", some times it actually is. If space is an issue, a simple way to fix it is to tell bitcoin to simple take less space. This is called "pruning" and can take that number from 300 GB down to below 5 GB. If you can't find 5 GB, then you'll have to read ahead to level-3 to add USB storage. But the good news is, enabling pruning is pretty easy, we just add another step to our working list:

1. Download Bitcoin Core
2. Launch the downloaded installer and install the app
3. Launch the installed "Bitcoin Core" app and let it run overnight
4. Do the wallet encryption steps here if you wish
5. Choose Options from the Settings Menu
6. Choose Prune block storage to: and select the max size for the blocks to use
7. Exit and restart the bitcoin application for the changes to take effect

​

Pruning Dialog

Note, even setting this to 1 GB will still leave you with about a 4.5 GB install. The blocks take up a lot of space, but the chainstate and other folders eat up at least 3.5 GB and they can't be pruned. Also, be aware, to disable pruning requires you to perform the entire IBD again. While pruned some other functions my be disabled as well, so just know that pruning does limit some functionality.

Tech Skill Level: 3 (verify the installer)

Although this is arguably something that should be done at level-0, some find the intricacies of comparing hash (thumbprint) values to be tedious and beyond the scope of a beginner. You will find these types of hash compares suggested quite often as a way to prevent running tainted programs. Programs are often tainted by bad disk or network performance, but most often, taint is malicious code inserted by viruses or malware. This is a way to guard yourself against those types of attacks. What I cover here is a very basic comparison on the certificate, but a more thorough comparison advised by mosts uses a program called Gpg4Win, and is beyond the scope of this beginners guide. But regardless, most users should strive to do this minimum level of validation.

1. Download Bitcoin Core
2. Launch the downloaded installer
3. When prompted "Do you want to allow..." click Show more details
4. In the details section select Show information about the publisher's certificate
5. In the certificate window select the Details tab
6. In the Details tab Subject should start with "CN = Bitcoin Core Code Signing Association"
7. Also ensure Thumbprint reads ea27d3cefb3eb715ed214176a5d027e01ba1ee86
8. If the checks pass, click OK to exit the certificate window and Yes to allow the installer to run.
9. Launch the installed "Bitcoin Core" app and let it run overnight
10. Do the wallet encryption steps here if you wish
11. Do the optional pruning steps here if you wish

​

Certification Validation Windows

Note: The certificate used to sign the current Bitcoin installer is only valid from March 2020 to March 2021. After that point the thumbprint on the certificate will change. This is by design and intentional. If your reading this post after March 2021, then it is understood that the thumbprint has changed.

Tech Skill Level: 4 (use secondary storage)

We glossed over the "new machine with fairly good internet" part. Truth me known many people do not have fairly new machines, and find the IBD to take longer than the "over night" best wishes. For most people the slowdown is the disk access when calculating what is called chainstate. This requires fast random reads and writes to the disk. If you have an SSD disk, this will be no problem, but if you have a non-SSD "spinning" disk, random writes are always slow. Though an SSD will speed things up, they are pricey, so a nice middle ground may be a simple high-end USB key drive. You can get some with 10 to 15 MB/s random writes which is usually a order of magnitude faster than a "spinning" disk. And with pruning (see level-2), a small USB drive should be fine.

Once you decide on a drive, the tricky part will be to enable external storage. It requires editing a configuration file and adding a few lines. The configuration file needs to be in both the default directory, and USB key drive, but before we do that, we want to create a directory on the key drive. You will need to determine the drive letter of your USB key drive. For the sake of this example, we will assume it is D:, but you must determine this yourself and correct the example. Once you know the drive letter, create a blank folder on the drive called Bitcoin. So for this example, creating Bitcoin on drive D: will create the path D:\Bitcoin. Once done, assuming that D: is your drive, here are the steps to edit the two configuration files:

1. Download Bitcoin Core
2. Launch the installer, verify it, then run it
3. Launch the installed "Bitcoin Core" app and let it run overnight
4. Do the wallet encryption steps here if you wish
5. Do the optional pruning steps here if you wish
6. Launch "Notepad" by typing "Notepad.exe" in the windows search bar then click Open
7. Type the line datadir=D:\Bitcoin (depending on your drive letter) in the blank file
8. Choose Save from the File menu in notepad
9. Type %APPDATA%\Bitcoin\bitcoin.conf (note the percent signs) in the File name box
10. Select All Files from the Save as type dropdown
11. Click the Save button and overwrite the file if prompted
12. Exit and restart the bitcoin application for the changes to take effect

​

Save As Dialog

Now that you've reached this level of technical expertise, there are many new configuration options that you can begin to modify if you wish. Most configuration data is contained in the bitcoin.conf file and learning how to maintain it is a key step for a node operator.

Tech Skill Level: 5 (all other customizations)

Here's a short list of various things you can ADD to your bitcoin.conf file. You generally just add a new line for each configuration settings.

• addresstype=bech32
• changetype=bech32

The addresstype / changetype allows your wallet to use the native-segwit (bech32) format. This is the most efficient and inexpensive way to spend bitcoin, and is a recommended configuration. The default uses something called p2sh-segwit which is more compatible with older wallets, but more expensive to spend.

• minrelaytxfee=0.00000011

Changing the minrelaytxfee setting allows you to help propagate lower fee transactions. It will require more memory but TXN memory is capped at 300 MB by default anyways, so if you have enough memory, it is a good setting to choose.

• dbcache=2048

The dbcache setting controls how many MB of memory the program will use for the chainstate database. Since this is a key bottleneck in the IBD, setting this value high (2048 MB) will greatly speed up the IBD, assuming you have the memory to spare

• blocksdir=C:\Bitcoin
• datadir=D:\Bitcoin

In level-4 we discussed moving the datadir to a fast external storage, but the majority of the space used for bitcoin is the blocks directory (blocksdir). Although you should always use for fastest storage for datadir, you are free to use slow storage for blocksdir. So if you only want to consume a small amount of your SSD (assumed D:) then you can keep your blocks on your slow "spinning" drive.

• upnp=1

One of the harder challenges you may face running a node, is to get incoming connections. If you are lucky, you may find that your firewall and network HW support the uPnP protocol. If they do, this setting will allow bitcoin to configure uPnP to allow incoming connections to your node.

Focusing on building Distribution Channels helped me scale my startup to 7 figures per year. Here's how:

Build Distribution Channels, Don’t Build Products

The number one reason startups fail is because they don’t succeed in getting traction.

In other words, they fail because they don’t succeed in getting enough users or customers for their product or service so that revenues could be greater than expenses. 

I know I know, duh, that’s obvious.

But, why do startups fail to get traction?

Most of the time it’s not because the product was bad or the idea didn’t solve a real problem. No, predominantly a startup doesn’t get traction because the founders don’t approach the business from a distribution first perspective. They never spend any time really figuring out how to efficiently get their product in front of their target customer. They don’t invest in building distribution channels. 

This brings me to my main point: You should spend most of your time early in your startup’s life building distribution channels, not products. 

The Mistake Everyone Makes

You are starting a company. 

The reason you are likely starting it is because you have an AWESOME idea for a new product or service that just needs to exist in the world. 

Of course, most entrepreneurs who find themselves at this point are going to spend the vast majority of their time and energy on building out their product and turning it into reality.

It makes sense why they would do this. Naturally, the new product and that thing they are creating is what they are so excited and passionate about. The product is what they are in love with. Not the question of, “How are you actually going to get people to use this product?”

So the distribution question gets ignored.

In this circumstance, the entrepreneur is so confident in their idea, and they just know that it will naturally spread like wildfire once they launch it. Why spend any time on marketing when the idea is this good?

The sad truth is that this NEVER happens, and the entrepreneurs who take this approach wind up launching their product to crickets. No one ever finds out about their amazing idea, and no one ever uses their product.

This is the mistake everyone makes. It’s the main reason why so many startups fail.

Distribution First Mentality

To win in business, I think you need to approach every new venture or startup idea from a distribution first mentality. 

It should be the question above all other questions when evaluating a new business: “How am I going to get this product or service in front of my target customers at scale?”

If you have a hard time answering this question, then your idea sucks. 

You HAVE to have a convincing, plausible, and executable distribution strategy for your product. If you do not, you are doomed to fail along with all of the other entrepreneurs who make the same mistake.

How We Built Distribution First

When starting our cryptocurrency tax software company CryptoTrader.Tax, we started with distribution first. 

From the launch of the company, we knew that it was extremely likely that one of the strongest distribution channels for this type of product would be Google Search.

We knew this because we could see that there were THOUSANDS of searches being done on Google every month for questions like, “How to report cryptocurrency on taxes”, “Crypto taxes”, “Is bitcoin taxable”, etc. We used tools like Google Keyword planner, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest to see keyword volumes on Google. 

The distribution channel was the search engine. 

So, if we could rank highly on Google for these types of search queries, we’d likely get a consistent flow of users into our website and into our cryptocurrency tax automation app.

It’s that simple. We had an idea for an app, and we came from a distribution first angle: how can we get our app in front of our target customers?

With that question answered, we started focusing on writing high quality content discussing the tax implications of cryptocurrencies. We published this content on our blog, and then focused on getting this content ranking as high as possible in the search results (SEO) for high volume queries like “crypto taxes” and “how to report crypto on taxes”.

Before our product was even complete, we had thousands of people reading our blog content and signing up for the waitlist for an application that would automate all of their crypto tax reporting, a TurboTax-like experience for crypto investors. 

Build the Distribution Channel

The examples of wildly successful entrepreneurs who took this same approach and built out distribution channels before launching products are endless. 

One of my favorite recent examples is what The Hustle did when launching their subscription informational product Trends. The Hustle is a media company that spent years building a free tech and business newsletter that gets read by millions of people every day (now THAT is a distribution channel). Then, on the back of this distribution channel, they launched a subscription product that helps identify up-and-coming startup Trends for hopeful entrepreneurs. 

The result?

Within a year of launch, Trends is making the company tens of millions of dollars. 

This is only possible because the Hustle built their distribution first. They can now reap the benefits of owning that distribution in dozens of ways—including launching related products to their audience and making millions.

Conclusion

Spend more time thinking about how you’re going to effectively distribute your product over how you are going to build it. Better yet, build the distribution channel before the product is ever even live. Your chances of success go up exponentially.

If you want to learn about more scrappy marketing tactics that will add jet-fuel level growth to your business, you should subscribe to my email list below. 

I blog about all of my marketing tactics that I am using to build my businesses, like the time I made $13,000 by growth hacking Instagram. I then email out all of my best tactics and ideas directly to the people on my email list. 

I’ll see you in the inbox!

Original article: https://davidkemmerer.co/distribution-channels/

Will BTC keep reach $15k by the end of the year?

Hello traders,

We still have 3 months till the end of the year, will Bitcoin reach the 15k price range by the end of the year. What are the possibilites or events that might lead to this price range?

Best Bitcoin Faucet Guide

Bitcoin faucets really are a remarkably common theme within the a variety of crypto communities across the world. They get both a great deal of compliments and backlash. Many folks love them, others believe they are not anything more than a scam. In this guide we will attempt and find out not just that collection is appropriate , but also search for the finest Bitcoin faucet accessible - supposing that it is legit, naturally.

​

I will inform you all about the subject: what's a Bitcoin faucet, exactly what they are used for, why are they a thing in the first location. We are going to speak about their effect on Bitcoin (if it be bad or good ) and finally see if we could locate a legit and rewarding Bitcoin faucet.

If you have ever abandoned a faucet not entirely closed on your kitchen or bath, you likely noticed that it dripped water. If you'd put a bowl under it, then it would likely fill the bowl in a day.

A Bitcoin faucet is a web site that provides you with quite tiny quantities of Bitcoin in the market for you personally resolving captchas, watching advertisements or performing some other super simple tasks.

The number of satoshis a Bitcoin faucet can provide you for the jobs vary - some websites have great prices, while some... not too much. It is a case-by-case situation.

​

Origin and Goal

It was produced by a guy called Gavin Andresen, who's known to be heavily engaged in cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Faucet provided users a benefit of 5 Bitcoins.

Obviously, Bitcoin was in its early phases of growth and has been worth roughly $0,01. In this kind of situation, a site offering customers to make $0,05 for seeing an advertisement or performing any other easy task still looks generous.

However, if we converted into Bitcoin's recent cost, that would signify that Gavin offered individuals nearly $29,000 for solving captcha! Picture that!

The initial purpose of a Bitcoin faucet would be to spread consciousness and instruct individuals about Bitcoin. As you go into the website, the faucet will first of all provide you a gamified method of studying about cryptocurrency trades - you'd find some match credits (coins) and may try different trade methods within the website (or program ).

Once you are comfortable and feel as if you understand what you are doing, the website enables you to engage in a variety of pursuits that give you a particular quantity of satoshis. It is a terrific way to gamify the learning procedure, whilst simultaneously earning new customers.

Get your $10 bonus if you register to get a brand new Coinbase accounts & trade at $100. Follow this Coinbase referral connection to trigger the offer.

Now that you understand what's a Bitcoin faucet and the way Bitcoin faucets function, I bet you are probably wondering - how just how does it make money?

Truth be told, it is not simple to make a profit using Bitcoin faucets. You might have the ideal Bitcoin faucet on the current market and still be fighting to make ends meet.

Faucet proprietors typically deposit some type of a sum of Bitcoin in their cryptocurrency pocket (in case you're trying to find a trusted wallet, have a look at Ledger Nano S and Trezor). This wallet is subsequently connected for their very own, private faucet website. After individuals make a particular quantity of Bitcoin by finishing jobs and playing minigames inside the website or program, that number of Bitcoin will be paid outside of their crypto pocket into the individual in question.

To make money and produce a gain from a Bitcoin faucet website, you may need to think of something distinctive and unique to produce your faucet stand from this audience. New Bitcoin faucets are emerging each and every day (equally as sites and as programs ), so the sector is regarded as somewhat aggressive. Just the very original ideas can electricity through the audience.

You should not forget that, in the conclusion of the afternoon, you are giving out cash (only in the kind of Bitcoin). Some choices of everything you can do together with your faucet comprise, but aren't restricted to: sponsor more advertisers, market your goods or services together with unskippable advertisement rolls, offer compensated contests and prize brakes, crowdfund, etc..

​

Distinctive and noticeable content won't just assist you in making money or spread consciousness but also grow into the rankings of best bitcoin faucet websites on the internet.

Weekly /r/DesMoines Events Thread for the week of September 20, 2020

This thread is for any events going on in Des Moines this week! What events will you be attending? What events do you want to attend? What events do you want to promote? Whats new around Des Moines this week? Add a comment below.

Please provide the following when posting new events: - Time, Date, Location, Cost and some sort of description of the event.

New threads start every Sunday, and will be stickied at the top of the subreddit.

Here are some places to find things to do: Cityview's Calendar - Juice's Calendar - Des Moines Register Event Page - Catch Des Moines Calendar

If you have any recurring events, specials, or other suggestions for this weekly thread, please send us a modmail

Bar Map

THANKS FOR HELPING US CROWDSOURCE THIS

Discord for Iowa/Des Moines https://discord.gg/2MKbCv5 

Trivia Nights:

• First Monday of the month is Mona's Pub Quiz at The Lift

• Benchwarmers in Ankeny on Mondays

• BeerStyles in WDM, Tuesdays 7-9 PM

• Ridgemont in Windsor Heights Wednesdays 8-11

• Wednesdays at Fireside Grille in Altoona -starts at 8

• Trivia Thursdays at The Ingersoll Tap.

• Tuesdays at Quinton's

• Gas Lamp has triva on Tuesday

• Tuesdays at Basement Bar at Des Moines Social Club

• There's trivia at The Beer House in Urbandale on Wednesdays, 7pm. Also at F&O's on Fridays, 9pm

• Tuesdays at Wellman's Ingersoll

• Wellmans Pub on Ingersoll has trivia Tuesday night at 8

• Trivia at Thunder Head in Ankeny every Tuesday

• Trivia at the Keg Stand, Thursday nights (I think it starts at 8:30?)

  Drink Specials:

• 2 for Tuesdays @ the Flying Moose every Tuesday all night (Also, 2 fers every day until 8pm)

• Beechwood has 2 for 1 on tuesdays.

• Quintons: Thursday Half off all drinks

• Quarter beers at both Flying Moose and Mickey's Clive on Weds

• Wednesday is geeks who drink at the red monk

• Lift has $3 draws on Thursday

• First Wednesday of every month there is a bottle share at 515 Brewing @ 6

  • Tuesdays they have trivia at The Hall in Valley Junction too. Starts at 7.
  • Smashpark in WDM has trivia at 7 and 8 on monday nights

  Weekly Open Mic night:

• Gas Lamp now does karaoke on Tuesdays (with a live band for you to sing with!).

• Tuesday night comedy open mic at Lefty's Live Music at 8pm.

• open mic every Tuesday at Luckys at 8.

• Friday night at the Beechwood is free stand-up comedy.

• Acoustic music open mic at AJ's on East Court, Sundays at 4pm

• Free Killer Queen at Up-Down every Thursday!

• There is trivia at The Ducktail Lounge on Sunday’s.

• Open Mic Thursday at Java Joe's Downtown at 7:30

  Other Ongoing Events:

• Blues Jam Band every Tuesday at Carl's Place, $3 tallboys

• Des Moines Bitcoin and Blockchain MeetUp at Gravitate in West Des Moines - 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month (eg Oct 25th) at 7:00pm

  If any of these are no longer current or you would like to add something, please ping /u/annarchist to update this thread otherwise I may miss it.

Bitcoin in the apocalypse

What will you guys do in a event of an EMP blast or another war? What if you no longer have internet access how will you access your bitcoin? If an EMP takes out your electronics and internet access?

I think we have reached the moment where “not your keys, not your coins” is more important than ever.

You have all heard about Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy gobbling up 38,250 bitcoin for $425 million.

This MicroStrategy event will be looked back upon as “the shot fired from the starting pistol” marking a new beginning, a new race into bitcoin from an unprecedented wave of institutional and corporate adoption.

These new adopters are not average joe’s.

These people are entering the game with a level of sophisticated power that we simple plebs and humble sat stackers simply cannot compete with.

However, we have ONE single sure-fire way to protect ourselves.

That is, get your coins off of the exchanges and into your own self custody… NOW.

With this new influx of powerful people, there will be many more critical eyes looking into all the nooks and crannies of the bitcoin space, to ensure they will benefit from bitcoin for their own self interests. (This is good.)

The big players want a 21 million hard cap and “number go up” just as much as you do. They do not want fractional reserve and rehypothecation. They will hire professional watchdogs in the private sector and they will push regulation in the public sector to ensure that bitcoins fundamentals will not be compromised.

If/when some exchange or custodian is ousted for having some bitcoin fractional reserves or some other form of malpractice results in lost bitcoin (intentional or unintentional) you can be certain that the big boys with their teams of lawyers and executive institutional relationships will be catered to first.

They will be protected, meanwhile we will be lucky to get any scraps once the dust settles.

They will receive special treatment that we cannot expect the luxury of.

The exchanges won’t care about you.

Your losses are a simple calculation that they have already planned to write off and move on from. You will not have the funds or the power to fight them and recover your losses.

If you have any amount of bitcoin on any exchange that you care about and you are reading these words right now… I implore you to take the time now to think all of this through and take good decisive actions very soon.

Your bitcoin can only be taken from you if you do not control your keys.

Win this war now by avoiding the battle altogether.

Take custody of your bitcoin while you still can.